Hebrew

Introduction

Hebrew script is used to write Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, and other languages. Historically Hebrew was one of the scripts used to write Aramaic (extinct).

The script is written from right to left. The letters represent consonants. Long vowels can be represented by three of the letters (ALEF, VAV & YOD). Short vowels are generally not marked, but can be by using "points" (small diacritic marks). Liturgical texts also use "cantillation marks" (more small diacritic marks) to indicate stress and musical motif. Most Hebrew fonts do not support cantillation marks, those that do are noted in the samples below.

David[ show all samples ]
(david.ttf and davidbd.ttf) Source: Comes with Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows 2000. Was also part of the Hebrew Language Support for Internet Explorer 5. Stats: Version 1.00 has 243 glyphs and no kerning pairsSupport: Hebrew, Latin

David Transparent[ show all samples ]
(davidtr.ttf) Note: Vowel points are invisible (transparent).Source: Comes with Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows 2000. Was also part of the Hebrew Language Support for Internet Explorer 5. Stats: Version 1.00 has 242 glyphs and no kerning pairsSupport: Hebrew, Latin

Ezra SIL and Ezra SIL SR[ show all samples ]
(SILEOT.ttf and SILEOTSR.ttf) Note: Based on the typography of the Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia (BHS). Coverage includes cantillation marks. These two fonts are visually the same except for the cantillation marks.Source: Free download from SIL International's Ezra page. Stats: Version 2.00 2003 has 397 glyphs and no kerning pairsSupport: Hebrew, Latin OpenType Layout Tables: Hebrew

Fixed Miriam Transparent[ show all samples ]
(miriamfx.ttf) Note: Vowel points are invisible (transparent).Source: Comes with Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows 2000. Was also part of the Hebrew Language Support for Internet Explorer 5. Stats: Version 1.10 has 243 glyphs and no kerning pairsSupport: Hebrew, Latin

FMBF Tahoma[ show all samples ]
(FMBF_Tahoma.ttf[regular] and FMBF_Tahoma_b.ttf [bold] from FMBF_Fonts.zip) Source: The Matenadaran website is no longer active, so the fonts can be downloaded from WAZU.JPStats: Version 3.05 has 2,115 glyphs and 704 kerning pairsSupport: Armenian, Cyrillic (Russian plus other Slavic and non-Slavic languages), Greek (including polytonic), Hebrew, Latin, Thai, Vietnamese

Kur2siv[ show all samples ]
(kur2siv.ttf from hebttf10.zip) Note: This font uses the "symbol" font encoding but seems to work fine with Unicode.Style: Cursive / Script Source: Ron Barak's shareware fonts are available for download from typenow.net. Stats: Version 21-Feb-1994 has 247 glyphs and 387 kerning pairsSupport: Hebrew

Levenim MT[ show all samples ]
(lvnm.ttf and lvnmbd.ttf) Source: Comes with Microsoft's Windows XP and Windows 2000. Stats: Version 1.00 has 242 glyphs and no kerning pairsSupport: Hebrew, Latin

Lucida Sans[ show all samples ]
(LucidaSansRegular.ttf, LucidaSansDemiBold.ttf, and may be others depending on the source) Note: The LSANS.TTF version of this font supports Latin only. Warning: Alignment issues with combining vowel points.Source: Provided with various products including Sun's free Java Software Development Kit version 1.4.2. Stats: Version 1.20 has 2,929 glyphs and no kerning pairsSupport: Cyrillic (all or most of range), Devanagari, Greek (including Coptic characters), Hebrew, IPA, Latin OpenType Layout Tables: Devanagari

Lucida Sans Typewriter[ show all samples ]
(LucidaTypewriterRegular.ttf, LucidaTypewriterBold.ttf, and may be others depending on the source) Note: The LTYPE.TTF version of this font supports Latin only. Warning: Alignment issues with combining vowel points.Source: Provided with various products including Sun's free Java Software Development Kit version 1.4.2. Stats: Version 1.10 JAVA has 1,376 glyphs and no kerning pairsSupport: Cyrillic (all or most of range), Greek (including Coptic characters), Hebrew, Latin

Additional Information About These Font Samples

Font sizes for the various fonts above were adjusted to make them roughly the same size for the sake of comparison.

The characters used for the font samples do not necessarily form words but were chosen for visual variety:
&#x05D0;&#x05D9;&#x05D4;&#x05E9;&#x05DC;
&#x05D0;&#x05B5;&#x05D9;&#x05B8;&#x05D4;&#x05B7;&#x05E9;&#x05C1;&#x05DC;&#x05B4;

The second line (with the vowel points added) is not shown for fonts with alignment/spacing issues.